


Blackbird

by Thaylepo



Series: Lucky Number [3]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Body Horror, Part 2 of the Lucky Number series, Takes place about two weeks after part 1, cuz it's animorphs, lots of Ax cuz i love Ax, oc narration, there will always be lots of ax
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 00:37:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11070402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thaylepo/pseuds/Thaylepo
Summary: Current activities are put on hold while the team has to stop the construction of a Yeerk satellite pool on a Hopi reservation.





	Blackbird

**Author's Note:**

> This story occurs about two weeks after the events of Lucky Number.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today we learn about horse eyeballs, and later echo the entire fandom's feelings about Andalites. 
> 
> Rated for mild swearing and kokoros doki-ing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the second part of this wild ride. The first chapter is called "wild ride". 
> 
> I recommend reading "Lucky Number" before this to get a sense of what's going on, but jumping in here is also fine.
> 
> This shows in the series list as the third part cuz the current Interlude falls between this and Lucky Number. That will change. The Interludes are fun character things that are planned as breathers in between the longer multi-chapter stories, but are not essential for the overarching plot.
> 
> Anyway, here we go whooooo

"Here she is," Cassie said proudly, gesturing to the ten-foot fence in back of her parents' barn. "Isn't she beautiful?"

'She' was a horse. A storm-grey mare with a charcoal mane and tail, and black creeping up her legs like she'd run through a puddle of ink. Almost taller than I was at the shoulder. Or 'withers', as Cassie said.

"She's fantastic," I agreed. I didn't know a lot about horses, but even I could tell this was one seriously beautiful animal.

The horse pawed at the ground. She probably smelled the apples we had.

"She's pure wild mustang," Cassie said, sticking her hand through the fence slats like there wasn't an animal on the other side with teeth the size of my big toe. "My mom's working with a doctor from New Mexico who's doing a DNA study of wild horse migration. We get to stable some of her subjects for a few weeks." She looked at the mare, enraptured. "Her name is Thunderstruck."

I snickered. "She's named after an AC/DC song?"

"A what?"

"Remind me to burn you a CD."

The horse had wandered close enough to sniff Cassie's hand, nudging it when she realized it was empty. Cassie patted her nose, earning a disdainful snort.

This didn't seem like wild horse behaviour, but I've spent a lot of time with Cassie in the last couple weeks to know she just has this.... _thing_ with animals. She just knows them. It looks like magic but I figure it has more to do with experience. Her parents are both vets who run a wildlife clinic in their barn. Cassie has probably been medicating grumpy wolves since she was in diapers.

"We have to keep her in the pen instead of the field," she said, letting AC/DC snuffle her hand and flap her big horse lips over her fingers. "She'll jump the shorter fences if we let her out."

I still half-expected those teeth to take a horse-shaped chunk out of her hand, but the grey mare just nosed her more firmly, nipping at the sleeve of Cassie's plaid shirt.

"Okay, okay," Cassie laughed. She held out the apple and the horse crunched it up delicately before dancing back with a triumphant whinny.

"I figured you'd like to try her out while she was here," Cassie said, leaning her arms on the fence. "Horses are useful animals. Strong, fast. And a lot of fun."

"Speaking from experience?" I asked.

She grinned. "My personal favourite." She urged me closer. "Come on, don't be shy. Horses can tell when you're nervous, and it spooks them. So just be calm."

"Calm. Right." I joined her at the fence. I was definitely nervous. Horses are a lot bigger up close than you expect them to be, and I didn't grow up on a farm.

But lately I had a lot more to worry about than a horse standing safely behind a ten-foot fence.

"Okay. What do I do?"

"Just hold out the apple," she told me. "Palm flat. Keep your hand still. Let her come and take it from you."

I did. You know how nerve-wracking it is to sit still and wait for an animal four times your weight to decide to come close enough for you to touch it?

Thunderstruck took her sweet time. She snorted. Snuffed. Ambled closer. Sniffed my hand. Snorted again.

"No sudden movements," Cassie advised me.

"Not planning on any," I laughed quietly. Horses have stiff whiskers on their snouts, and it tickled a little bit.

Luckily, I have some experience with standing still on demand. I waited, and finally the horse closed her teeth around my apple and chewed it up with horselike daintiness. Which, up close, isn't really dainty at all. Lots of chomping and apple bits flying.

"Not bad, huh?" Cassie grinned at me.

"No, not bad."

She pulled another apple out of her jeans pocket. "I'm going to get her first. When she's still, you go ahead, okay?"

"Okay."

Like before, she played a little game of tug with AC/DC before letting her have the apple. But this time, before the mare could pull away, she placed a hand on her nose and she immediately froze, as if in some bizarre trance.

The horse that is, not Cassie. Cassie motioned to me, keeping her hand on Thunderstruck's muzzle, and I followed suit.

I touched the horse's face, the thick strong chewing muscle on her cheek, and concentrated. Focused on her. The gleam of her storm-grey flanks, her long black mane and tail, her dark soulful eyes and their long lashes.

The long legs and hard hooves. The dense muscle she was packed with. The beautiful, iconic shape that made her what she was.

I pulled my hand away. "Okay, I got her."

Cassie beamed. "Now for the fun part."

 

* * *

 

We walked out a ways into her fields. Far enough to be out of sight from her house, even though no one was home. We shed our outer clothing and left it hanging on a fence post.

And once more, I focused on the horse.

I like keeping my eyes closed for most of this part. I find it pretty distracting when my body starts to change. But Cassie's been urging me not to do that, since in battle it's not a good idea to close your eyes.

She's right. But's still really freaking disturbing.

My face exploded outward. Thankfully, my whole face, all at the same time. The last time I morphed my fox, my bones had started changing before the rest of me, and uh.... let's just say, if I'd still had skin and muscle to move my jaw with, there would have been screaming.

Since then I've been focusing a lot more on morphing specific body parts. Cassie is really good at it, but it is hard. And morphing is already pretty difficult.

My butt changed almost right after my face. I probably looked ridiculous, but you show me someone turning their ass into a horse with alien technology that _doesn't_. Except for Cassie that is. She was currently a centaur, slowly and evenly becoming less human as she watched my body bulge with horse parts, making sure I was doing okay.

After the butt, it was all easy street. My legs lengthened, muscles and bone shifting into their new shapes, my core body thickened with outrageously dense muscle, and as a nice final effect, my mane and tail flowed out like an inky waterfall in the breeze.

I was rather proud of that last part.

<Nicely done,> Cassie told me. She was fully horse, and had been for about a minute or so before me. We were identical, two grey and black horses standing in an open field.

<Thanks. I'm still not used to this.>

She laughed, the sound bubbling up in my mind. <Oh, some parts of it you never get used to. Ready to run?>

<Uh. Give me a sec.>

And sure enough, after a second or two, I felt the horse's brain click on.

After my first morph, I learned how strong animal instincts can be. I almost ate a duck alive. So Cassie had me practice morphing a field mouse to get used to the overpowering sense of a different creature inside your own brain. Let me tell you, I am going to be a lot nicer to mice from now on. Those little guys are nothing but a bundle of blind fear on concentrated caffeine, constantly starving, constantly terrified.

An animal's mind sharing space with your own is a bizarre and kind of scary thing to experience. Humans don't have those instincts, or at least we have very different ones. We definitely don't have the uncontrollable urge to snack on live ducks when we're walking through the park.

The horse brain was pretty mild compared to that. It didn't like the random billowing of the clothes we left on the fence though. I felt its agitation as it tried to figure out if my thrift store sweatpants were a threat or not.

Horses have surprisingly good eyesight, I realized. Even though there was a big blindspot right in front of my face, I could see almost all the way around me in my peripheral vision. If I twisted my head to the side, I could see behind and in front of me at the same time.

Pretty useful for a prey species. I would be hard to sneak up on as long as I kept moving around, and I had my big strong back legs to kick with if something did get behind me.

And even with the looming threat of windborn sweatpants, the horse was still pretty into all the tasty green grass underfoot. It wanted to mosy along and have a snack, preferably away from the flapping clothes.

<Yeah, I'm good,> I told Cassie. <Let's go.>

We took off, and holy hell, let me tell you. There is _nothing_ in the whole world that compares to running like a horse.

I'd never ridden a horse, so I couldn't tell you if it was anything like that. But feeling my hooves pound on the grass, my long powerful legs pushing me forward into the air, the wind rushing over my big horse face, I felt powerful. I felt alive. I was exactly where the horse wanted to be, exactly where it should be, doing exactly what it should do.

<Haha! This is amazing!> I shouted happily.

<I know, right? Ahahaha!>

Adrenaline was pumping through my veins, not from fear but from sheer excitement. I didn't know if my human brain was affecting the horse's body or not. I didn't care. I wanted to run forever.

<Pace yourself,> Cassie told me, still laughing giddily. <Horses are long distance plodders, but they burn out fast at a hard gallop. Try a canter for a while.>

<I don't know what that is,> I said.

<Just slow down a bit. The horse knows.>

I did as she said. My gait went from propelling all four hooves into the air to using one hind leg to push off with every step. It was still fast, and made a neat triple-beat sound when my three remaining hooves hit the grass.

<Just like that,> Cassie approved.

<I definitely see why the horse is your favourite.>

<Heh, yeah. I have like five different horse morphs now.>

We slowed down some more, falling into what Cassie called a trot. I didn't know a trot was a specific thing. I thought it was just what horses did.

<Want to visit Tobias?> Cassie asked.

<Do we get to jump the fence?>

<Why not?>

That sounded just fine to me.

We picked up speed, circling around to aim at the low fence that separated the field from the forest around Cassie's farm. I let the horse brain gauge the distance, trusting it to know when to leap and how high.

Controlling the animal's instincts is one thing. Using them without letting yourself lose that control is another. It also takes practice. Luckily, the horse _wanted_ to jump the fence. And it definitely knew how.

At what seemed like the last second, I pushed off the ground with my powerful hind legs and _soared_. I _flew_. For a second it was like I'd left the entire earth behind and I no longer knew where it was. The ground, and the fence below me, were entirely in my blind spot. I sailed up and up, and then came down and down.

Thunk. Thunkthunkthunk. All four hooves hit the ground, several feet away from the fence, and kept trotting. I'd cleared it with room to spare.

Cassie followed right behind be, leaping gracefully and effortlessly over the wooden rails. Like it was hardly any bother at all.

<Okay, follow me. We're going to take a roundabout way, just as a precaution.>

<Sure,> I said. That meant more running. I was fine with that.

We trotted along through the trees, navigating around underbrush and other obstacles. The horse was definitely less at ease in the forest than out on the open field, which made sense. It was equipped to be able to see everything in wide open spaces. Here there was a lot of stuff in the way, and a lot of random movement that kept startling it.

<Don't worry,> Cassie reassured me. <There are no wolves or cougars around here.>

<That's good to know.>

<There used to be, but they've mostly stayed away since Ax moved in.>

Ah ha. That would do it.

It took maybe a half hour, maybe a little less, before we trotted into a nice little meadow framed by big cottonwoods and one impressively twisted jackpine. The horse was extremely happy to be out of the trees, even if the meadow was too small for its taste. It did like the look of the grass here though.

<You know,> a different voice said, <if I hadn't already eaten, I'd be annoyed by you two.>

A red-tailed hawk took flight from the jackpine and landed in a branch overhead. <I mean seriously, you come just clomping into someone's living room like that? Scaring all the prey away with your big noisy horse feet?>

<Hi Tobias,> Cassie said.

<Hey Cassie. How's it going?>

<Good, I think. We thought we'd come say hello.>

I let them chat, not really sure what to say. Tobias knew it was me, of course. No one else was taking morphing lessons from Cassie right now. But we hadn't exactly spent time getting to know each other so I wasn't exactly offended that he didn't say hello.

<Should we demorph while we're here?> I asked Cassie privately.

<That's a good idea.>

She didn't say it, but I wondered if she thought being around Tobias made me nervous. I wouldn't say it did, but it definitely reminded me there's a two hour limit for morphing, and Tobias is what you get when you forget that.

I liked being the horse. But I didn't want to spend the rest of my life eating grass and being afraid of sweatpants in the wind.

I concentrated on my own body, just like I had with the horse. This part is actually a little trickier, because who thinks about their own body in explicit detail? You might see yourself in the mirror every day, but you probably don't have your own face memorized. You just know it when you see it.

I pictured that face now, my brown skin and long hair, the cheekbones high under my eyes, nose a little too big, eyebrows a little too low. The shape of my eyes and my mouth. I'd spent time studying myself in the mirror, just to make this part easier.

The ground got closer in a hurry. It looked like my limbs were changing first this time, so I rolled with it. I focused on my human legs and arms, the muscles I knew I had, the way my back felt when I stood up straight. My body shrank, contracted, the horse shape melting away.

<Morphing outfit,> Cassie reminded me gently.

<Shit,> I said. My face was still a horse face. I gave up trying to control the rest of the morph and instead worried about making sure my clothes showed up in time.

Morphing clothing, it turns out, is a real pain in the ass. It takes a lot more focus than just morphing naked, which already takes a lot of concentration. And it has to be skintight, which is why when I finally finished, I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit and swim shorts two sizes too small for my butt.

If you don't do it right, even that stuff can get shredded by a morph. Or, in this case, almost disappear into.... wherever it goes when you change shape. Narnia or whatever.

Cassie was done her morph ahead of me again, taking her time while I struggled, breathless and straining, to finish mine. It was a little frustrating, even knowing she'd been doing this for over a year while I'd barely started two weeks ago.

I'm not used to having to play catch-up, I guess. But I sure wasn't going to let that discourage me.

I stood up in the grass, barefoot, since morphing shoes is straight up a no go. I saw something move, just in the corner of my eye, and maybe it was a leftover shred of the horse mind, but my heart jumped right into my throat and I spun around, knees bent and ready for an attack.

There was no attack. Instead, emerald green eyes stared at me from between two cottonwoods. Four eyes, to be exact.

I straightened, drawing in a sharp breath. The eyes blinked, slowly, and their owner stepped out from the trees with liquid grace.

He was a little taller than me, about the size of a small deer, and covered in blue fur. Like a dainty, graceful centaur with two extra eyes stuck on his head, and no mouth.

And a long curving tail tipped with a wicked scythe blade.

Cassie smiled. "Hi Ax," she said.

<Hello Cassie. I hope you are well.>

Ax. Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthil. It had taken me a few tries to be able to say that properly. Ax is an alien, an Andalite, and he's pretty much the most amazing thing I've ever laid eyes on.

"We're just in the middle of a morphing lesson," Cassie said. She approached him easily, while I hung back like I had with the horse.

Ax's left stalk eye flicked in my direction. <I see,> he said.

I knew I was staring, and I couldn't help it. Two weeks ago Ax had been the one to officially give me the morphing ability, since it was Andalite technology and all I guess. I hadn't seen him at all since then.

Standing so close to him that day, close enough to touch his fur if I'd wanted, I'd been absolutely floored that someone like him could exist, right here, on the same world as me. Even now I couldn't stop my eyes from following him, from noting the otherwordly way he moved, the subtle nuances that showed he was put together just a little differently from anything on Earth.

I'd never really thought about what aliens from other planets might look like, but if I'd known they'd be like Ax, I would have paid more attention for sure.

I realized everyone was also staring at _me_ , including Ax. His brilliant green eyes blinked again. I wished to god I could read his facial expressions, but he just looked blank and aloof.

"Sorry," I said. I rubbed my hands on my too-small shorts. I am not normally the sweaty nervous kind, but damn it. There was an _alien_ right _in front_ of me. And he was _beautiful_.

Unfortunately, it turns out, Ax is also kind of a jerk. He looked past me to Tobias, and then to Cassie, dismissing me entirely.

<I wish you luck,> he said. Then he turned and sprang off into the trees, hardly rustling a leaf as he went.

I let out a heavy breath and sank down onto my back the grass. I didn't know if I was more annoyed, frustrated, or offended. I also didn't even know if I should be any of those.

<Don't worry,> Tobias said nonchalantly. <He'll come around. He just hates change.>

He swooped from his tree branch and into the grass, probably after a tasty mouse.

"He does take some getting used to," Cassie added, sitting down beside me in her dance leotard. "But he's really very sweet. In his own way."

It didn't matter, I thought. Ax could be the biggest asshole in the entire universe. I was still completely entranced with him.

And it wasn't like he could avoid me forever. After all, we were all supposed to save the world together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weeeee're back haha. I'm not sure how often this update, knowing myself. I'm just trying to get over a massive block right now. It will come as it does I guess.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Next chapter is half written as of this posting.


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